Naser Musa Christmas and Beyond

Naser Musa’s ‘Ud and Beyond

A CD Review by Turath.org

’Tis the season to hear Christmas carols in most shop and homes. This year, the holiday season has a different musical background: ‘ud solos from Joy to the World to Jingle Bells and Deck the Halls. Thanks to the new CD Christmas and Beyond by Naser Musa, the Southern-California-based composer, singer, and master ‘ud player, you can enjoy seven tracks of the most popular Christmas carols played on the ‘ud without vocals.

The beauty of this work is not in the novelty of playing Western carols on an Eastern instrument; it is in how the highly talented Naser Musa plays the pieces as he would classical compositions from the Arab repertoire. Musa introduces taqasim, improvised interludes amongst the carols, that make the listener lose track of the original theme before coming back to familiar grounds. He combines a few carols into a medley. He skillfully modulates from the original Western scales to various maqamat, modes of Arab music, to bring listeners to a state of tarab. Naser moves a melody in a major or minor Western scale to an eastern scale with microtones such as maqam saba, bayyati, of sikah, etc. answering the question “I wonder how this Christmas carol would sound if played in maqam Rast instead of C Major.”

Naser does not stop there. In one track he tastefully introduces Khaliji-style clapping as a percussive background. After the initial surprise of hearing the clapping, one remembers that Musa is a specialist in Khaliji (from the nations of the Arab/Persian Gulf) songs. His previous CD is titled Khaliji (read review on Turath.org) and has beautiful percussions and clapping.

Christmas and Beyond, which also contains seven other tracks of religious songs in Arabic, is a perfect tool to introduce Westerners to Arab music because they can recognize the melodies of the Christmas carols they grew up with, yet learn about the 'ud and percussion instruments and the Arab musical style, masterfully performed by Naser Musa.